Kleanthis Mantzouranis
Link
Profile
My research interests lie in Greek ethical and political thought (especially Aristotle), Greek historiography, and the social and cultural values of archaic and classical Greece. My forthcoming monograph (Honour in Aristotle’s Ethics) establishes a two-way dialogue between Aristotle and contemporary sociology, philosophy, and psychology to offer a thorough re-evaluation of the significance of honour (timē) in Aristotle’s psychology and ethics. Through the study of Aristotle’s ethical and political philosophy, I became interested in ideas about the virtues, role, and duties of individuals in positions of power and, ultimately, in the notion of leadership in the works of Herodotus and Thucydides.
Abstract
My project utilises contemporary developments in the field of leadership theory (leadership ethics; identity leadership) to explore the dynamics of individual-group relationships in Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War. It focuses on the deliberative function of Thucydides’ speeches and seeks to unpack the interactive relationship between speaker/leader and audience/followers. One strand of the project explores the extent to which Thucydidean speakers employ a sense of group identity to influence the decisions and actions of their audience. I investigate how speakers negotiate the multiple identities of a given group, and the effectiveness of crafting a sense of group identity as a method of influence. More broadly, my research focuses on the interplay of rhetoric and emotions in the process of leadership. I examine the ways in which the followers’ emotions in general, and in situations of crisis in particular, influence how they view and evaluate their leader, and, in turn, the leaders’ use of rhetoric to respond to, or manipulate, the emotions of followers. I am also interested in the relative strength of different emotions (e.g., anger, fear, pride, hope) to influence the decisions and actions of an audience. Through a careful examination of selected Thucydidean speeches and their outcomes in terms of decision-making, this project seeks to shed new light on Thucydides’ deliberative rhetoric and test its effectiveness in the light of modern theories of influence.
